Knitting, I think, goes without saying. I'm actually teaching a beginning cable class this afternoon. (I use the term "class" loosely. I have one student.) I haven't been good about updating the knitting things lately. I finished a pair of socks a couple weeks ago and have worn them a couple times, but I haven't actually taken pictures of them. I meant to...it just hasn't happened. I'm also almost done with a second pair (one's done, the second is almost half done). That's my current "purse project." It lives in my purse, so that I can take it out and work on it whenever I have the time and inclination. As long as I have my purse, I have my knitting. I'm also working on a lace stole in alpaca lace yarn. It's soft and fine, and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product. I'm about halfway done at the moment. I'll be sure to take pictures of that one.
Food is a slightly more challenging issue. I'm pretty much responsible for all the food preparation in our house. Michael does help when he's home. He enjoys certain aspects (he likes stirring cookie dough, for example) and is willing to do things like chop vegetables. Every once in a while he is struck with inspiration, or a certain hankering for something. A couple weeks ago it was P.F. Chang's double pan fried noodles, or at least something very like them. Since the nearest P.F. Chang's is about 45 minutes away, and we're being good about sticking to our budget, he decided to search for recipes to see if we could come up with something of our own. This was the result:
We made spaghetti, then pan fried the cooked noodles in some olive oil. We chopped a bunch of veggies (zucchini, onion, green onion, mushrooms, and carrot), sauteed them, added some seasonings and soy sauce, added the noodles to the pan again to get heated through, and voila! Dinner was served.
While that was a yummy dinner that was Michael's brain child, those occasions are few and far between. The rest of the creativity rests with me. Sometimes I really enjoy it. I like the challenge of coming up with new things and having them turn out well. Sometimes I don't want to because I'm tired or frustrated and I'd like food to just *poof!* appear, delicious and fully cooked. Sadly, I lack a genie, or a Star Trek replicator, and so I must come up with things on my own. Last night I decided I wanted empanadas. For those of you familiar with the Taco Bell caramel apple empanada, let me just say that real empanadas are nothing like those. I'm not really a big fan of those. As far as deep fried apple filled fast food pastries are concerned, I'll take a MacDonald's apple pie any day over a Taco Bell caramel apple empanada. That said, empanadas are mearly the hispanic version of the ubiquitous filled pastry. The pastry is a vehicle to carry any filling you care to stuff it with. I was first introduced to them while in Santiago, Chile. There the traditional fillings were beef, onion, egg, and olive, cheese, or fruits for dessert. I'm sure there were other varieties, but those are what I remember the most. Empanadas can be fried, but the bigger ones used for meals are usually baked. So, last night, I set out to find a suitable dough for my empanadas. I found this recipe on allrecipes.com and decided to try it. For the filling I made my usual chicken burrito mixture, which is really basic and consists of chicken tenders cooked in a pan with a little water and liberally sprinkled with salt, pepper, cumin, garlic powder, and red pepper, then shredded after cooking. The dough was okay, but not great. I probably won't make it again. It was difficult to work with, and kept bouncing back when I tried to roll it out. I had to fight it to get it to be thin enough. The dough also has a fair amount of sugar in it, which made it sort of odd for the savory filling I had in mind. Like I said, it was okay, but not great. I made four chicken and cheese empanadas, but had more dough than chicken filling. So, with the last of the dough I made two small apple empanadas (I cut up and peeled an apple, then placed the chunks on the rolled out dough and sprinkled them with cinnamon and sugar). The sweet dough seemed to work better with the apple filling than the chicken filling. Next time I'll try a different dough.
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